Erin Murphy

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, most recently Swoon: New & Selected Poems, Human Resources, Mother as Conjunction: Lyric Essays, Fluent in Blue, Taxonomies, and Assisted Living. Her areas of interest include poetry, creative nonfiction, demi-sonnets (a 7-line form she invented), docupoetics, prose poetry, class, labor & employment, medical humanities, the writing process, and humor. Her edited anthologies are Creating Nonfiction and Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives on Illness, Disability, and Medicine, both of which won Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, and Making Poems. Her work has appeared in Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Poetry Ireland Review, The Best of Brevity, Best Microfiction 2024 and 2026, The Writer's Almanac, and anthologies from Random House, Bloomsbury, Bedford/St. Martin's, and other university and independent presses. Her awards include the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Rattle Poetry Prize Readers' Choice Award, the Foley Poetry Award, and The Normal School Poetry Prize. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona, where she has received the Athleen J. Stere Teaching Award, the Grace D. Long Faculty Excellence Award, the university-wide Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Penn State's inaugural BTAA Mellon Academic Leadership Fellowship. She is the 2026-27 Penn State Laureate.